


Enjambment

by nieolah



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, Post-Dark Side Of Dimensions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nieolah/pseuds/nieolah
Summary: If he knew crossing dimensions and dueling Atem would have cost him possession of the Blue Eyes White Dragon, then Seto Kaiba would have reconsidered his options. After striking a difficult deal with the pharaoh and the so-called gods, Seto finds himself at the mercy of the dragon's reincarnation.
Relationships: Kaiba Seto/Kisara, Kisara/Priest Seto
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

Pre-DSOD

She was nearly as unnoticeable as the flickering dirt speck on the navy fibers of his perfectly ironed school uniform. A speck, however, instigated the merest acknowledgement. That was how Seto Kaiba felt after walking into his homeroom class and briefly noticing the previously empty desk next to his currently occupied by a girl.

He only allowed himself to deduce that for one, she was new and must have graced the halls of Domino High School some time he was absent - which was often with how much he prioritized his technological pursuits outside of school. Secondly, he thought her alabaster sheet of hair was her best feature, or rather, her _only_ feature he could observe from the way her face was uncomfortably planted into a thick workbook.

And that was all he cared to note once he sunk into his desk and slipped out his laptop. His distinctively calculating eyes momentarily drifted toward the outside world through the dirty panes, and he himself felt nothing as the first remnants of snow lapsed into the earthly hell of Domino. As any tedious school day went for Seto, he started off doing work completely unrelated to the academic curriculum and did his best to eradicate the buzz of his peers' chatters.

"Good morning, Kaiba," an annoyingly familiar voice arose two seats down from his.

Seto's fingers flinched to pause for a second before returning to their rhythm as he replied, "Because this will be my last morning here, I agree. It _is_ a good morning, Yugi."

Midway through senior year, the little twink had finally, although partially, hit the boundaries of puberty. His eyes were angled differently, and his disposition carried an air of maturity coupled with a lower vocal range that Seto had otherwise believed would have been skipped. Consequently, Yugi Muto's maturing qualities dismayed Seto from having to speak directly to his face, for as the days of adolescence passed, Yugi looked more and more like someone in the recesses of his past.

Normally, Yugi would have continued with small talk, either regarding Duel Monsters as a sport or KaibaCorp's current developments pertaining to Duel Monsters. There wasn't much the two could share, mostly due to Seto's apathetic attitude and conversational briefness. This morning constituted a rare and peculiar silence from Yugi.

From the corner of his eye with his attention mainly on his laptop screen, Seto noticed Yugi's gaze wasn't on him. Instead, he appeared to be staring in the direction of the girl next to him. Of course, this didn't constitute Seto to glance the same way. There was nothing valuable to discern despite how oddly long Yugi's attention was fixated.

Before Yugi could open his mouth again, Anzu Mazaki had fortunately interrupted him as she greeted her friend and pulled him into some conversation that Seto had even less care to eavesdrop. He was left alone to his laptop with his trademark frown and furrowed eyebrows enough to spur away questionable classmates.

Again, however, he noticed how Yugi and Anzu's head reversed in the way Yugi did before. They were suddenly and shockingly quiet too. It was rather unnerving to Seto, so much that he affirmed their attention by tearing his eyes from his screen to their line of sight.

He turned his head to the right and couldn't understand their interest in the white haired girl. She wasn't doing anything remarkable and maintained her position of a dismal nap. Seto's gaze returned to Yugi and Anzu, realizing they had changed their eyes to him. Their unreasonable silence irked him.

"... _What_?" Seto declared with a pang in the air that caught the attention of other students in the room, for it was rare he spoke so audibly and any drama between _the_ Seto Kaiba and Yugi Muto excited them.

Yugi, aware everyone had eyes on them, said, "Nothing. Anzu and I will miss you." He turned to the room and loudly asked, "Won't we all?"

No one really would miss Seto. He never talked to anybody, initiated or addressed. Even as a notable figure, he would never give some teenagers the time of day about KaibaCorp or Duel Monsters aside from Yugi. However, during the times he was at school, Seto was a source of comedic gold when it came to shutting down their teachers, for his snide, rude attitude toward intravenous authority never failed to amuse his classmates. For that only, an ironic applause erupted from everyone with a couple whoops and hollers, ultimately confusing Seto.

Seto figured that Yugi was just playing around with him again. He shook his head and returned to his laptop. All the noise died down once their first teacher walked in.

"Sanada. Sanada. _Sanada_."

A rather exhausted tone elapsed from Mr. Ito, who had taken it upon himself to traverse to the back of the room and loom in between Seto and the girl. An ominous _crack_ from the metal of Mr. Ito's infamous ruler imploded on contact with the wood of the girl's desk.

The normal response would have been a sudden jerk. A couple students in the room slightly jumped from their seats at the sound, but the girl did nothing of the like. Instead, her head slowly lifted up, as if nothing in the world could elicit an excitatory response from her. A shallow yawn dared to escape her.

Even Seto sideyed the scene, although her face was hidden by Mr. Ito's body. He quickly returned to his own business.

"With your grades, Sanada, I _hardly_ believe you are spending late nights studying. You are invited to my office after school."

Mr. Ito promptly left her desk and elicited a panicked tone from the Sanada girl.

"I-I can't!" she exclaimed.

"No excuses."

"What about hi-"

Her lips thinned, and her sudden protest intrigued Seto enough for him to glance to his side. Much to his surprise and displeasure, her eyes, her weirdly nostalgic deep blues, had landed on him. His own eyes narrowed a bit but he had little opportunity to dissect the rest of her features, as she instantly blushed a faded pink at his acknowledgement of her stare and quickly turned her face forward.

She stuttered to quietly follow, "Nevermind. I'm sorry." For the rest of the time, she made sure not to accidentally turn her head his way again, and he ended up being mentally preoccupied by her behavior.

It eventually dawned to Seto that the girl had wanted to argue the partiality of their teacher to Seto's own privilege. No other student in the room possessed a laptop on their desk. It was custom to clear one's desk at the start of the day as well. If he so blatantly disregarded the laws of the school, then he too should have an appointment after school.

He concluded she was pathetically irresolute. A small scoff escaped under his breath. If she had an ounce of gut, perhaps she would have been successful, and he would have been mildly impressed to see someone else argue against old Ito logically for a change. Of course if she knew who he was, which was highly likely, it might have been the smarter choice not to have him involved in something so trivial, especially on his last day of the abysmal institution of high school.

Seto really should have withdrawn sooner, for there was nothing academically challenging here for someone of his bearings and intellect. His lawyers had the worst of times trying to negotiate the case of his early graduation with the stubborn regime of Domino's education system. He could've bought his degree but it wouldn't take long for the media to catch. KaibaCorp's shareholders and employees still weren't completely confident in his remarkably young age, so going on without a high school degree was supposedly more damaging. Even with the massive success of the duel disk, Seto Kaiba was doomed to sequester himself to a suffocatingly tiny school desk in order to appease others. That was the worst part - appeasing others.

Until tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would throw himself into the developments of the latest version of the duel disk, his controversial space elevator, and his secret side project. No one was going to stop tomorrow, not the stupid school system, not Yugi's sentiments, and certainly not what the girl next to him was going through.

Towards the end of the homeroom period, Jonouchi Katsuya and Honda Hiroto arrived

in the awfully tardy fashion they magically managed even on Seto's sporadic school days. Their public scolding gave Seto no interest with its inherent futility. If anything, he suffered from a growing headache amplified by the unnecessary bickering from Jonouchi and Honda.

* * *

The headache clung to him all day, a pestilence to his otherwise peaceful day. His last walk in the bleak, monochromatic halls of the school would have been blissful as well, if not for someone's hand on his shoulder.

 _No one_ at school had touched him like the way Honda just did, and it caused Seto to abruptly stop and give the other man a weaponized look down. It was enough to make Honda immediately take his hand off and raise up his hands as if to indicate he was backing off.

"Sorry, man," Honda said and nervously rubbed the back of his head.

Honda was the least annoying of Yugi's band of dimwits, despite being the dimmest of wits. This was due to him having the least interaction with Seto. Because he wanted to leave so badly, Seto merely assumed Honda had mistaken him for someone else and chose to ignore him by walking away.

"Wait!" Honda shouted out, "You haven't seen Kisara have you?"

And the aching of his head was miraculously worse than it ever was. Seto slowly turned back to face Honda.

"I don't know who that is," he plainly answered.

Honda immediately looked perplexed. He opened his mouth as if to say more but quickly shut it.

"Aye, Honda. Old Ito is gonna bust our asses if _we_ don't meet him in his office," Jonouchi announced his entrance. He stopped after realizing Seto was also in the hallway. He awkwardly said, "Er...hello, Kaiba."

"Goodbye, Katsuya," Seto sourly disregarded as he picked up his pace to leave.

"Kisara-" Jonouchi started as he caught up and he dared to lay his hand on Seto's shoulder.

"I don't know who that is, and I don't know why I would know where they are, or why I should know either," Seto spouted as he snapped his shoulder back. He stayed still this time, silently demanding for an explanation.

Jonouchi placed his hands on his hips. He looked at Honda down the hallway, who only shook his head in a discouraging manner, prompting Jonouchi to return to Seto and say, "That's probably for the best then. See ya, money bags. Try to do good things out there, eh? Like making more of those duel disk lotteries for the new one next year."

Without further word, the two friends left Seto to unanswered questions.

* * *

The appalling, sharp screech of his car's tires was the last thing he wanted to happen on an already tainted day. His chauffeur had brought the car to a cruel halt, lunging Seto forward in the back. He felt the leather of his seatbelt dig into his chest and the breath knocked out of him. A violent coughing fit escaped from his lungs, earning panicked concern from his chauffeur.

"Are you alright, sir?! I'm sorry but a pedestrian suddenly ran out onto the crosswalk."

Seto regained his composure and lifted his head to only recognize the same girl who sat next to him in his homeroom class stare doe-eyed at the driver, clearly frightened from the possible cataclysmic event that could have happened. Whatever headache he had abstained had gotten surprisingly worse again as he unknowingly drifted off into a short and nightmarish sequence of illusory scent and noise that rendered his real vision of the girl in the frame of his car's front window gone. His hand slapped his forehead as if to quell his hallucinatory state and his head drooped low.

Not honking vehicles or the skid of tires across rubble street but foreign orchestra of perhaps scales and lutes and the pouring screams of street haggling and

Not the artificial citrus of the car air freshener lodged onto the conditioner or the faintness of the detergent on perfectly ironed business cloth but instead unprocessed, organic, natural,

cinnamon

myrrh

lily and

Not a forgettable Japanese school girl escaping detention but eyes and hair time immemorial.

"Sir?"

Seto took shallow breaths as he removed his hand and brought his face back up. Whoever was in front had left. He retreated back to his seat and collected himself, still ignoring his driver's questions. Behind them was a line of cars furious with their shouts and honks. He thoughtlessly chomped on his bottom lip, snatched his coat, and propelled himself out of the car and into the snow trodden streets of Domino City.

"Sir! Sir!" His driver opened his window and screamed out after him, but he had an obligation on the road to move on, so he drove off and muttered curses dealing with deserving raises and the like.

The brisk cold of the outside world had no impact on the hotness of his hummingbird heart as he ran toward where he thought she was and his eyes frantically scanned the passing scenery of concrete jungle. A couple people glanced his way, as he was not the typical citizen running willy nilly. It would be no surprise to find the tabloids tomorrow cite the crazy manners of KaibaCorp's chief executive officer, not that it was rare or anything.

Thankfully the streets had gotten quieter as he neared behind her. She felt the presence of someone following her and whirled around to find him pause at the same time. They stood approximately three feet apart. Her mess of long white hair appeared to be the only extra thing that kept her remotely warm aside from her already thin school uniform. Everyone else was appropriately dressed for the impending snowstorm that day.

"Catch," Seto declared.

She found his coat thrown at her and into her receiving arms. It felt nice, _expensive_. Possibly warm. Her gaze was lost at the article of clothing for a while when she failed to realize what the stranger had continued to say.

"What?" she asked in a daze.

"I said," he repeated with a more irritated tone. She had a feeling he didn't like to be repetitive.

"Consider this as payback."

Her puzzled face appeared as if she wanted to protest, but she couldn't waste her time. With having no idea of what he was referring to and having an urgency that trumped the current situation elsewhere, she didn't want to voice complaint.

Instead, she softly regarded, "Thank you. My name is-"

"Sanada," he insisted, " _I know_."

Seto turned his heel and walked away, leaving her to her own complications. Tomorrow would come and he would be a day closer to reviving someone else - someone that actually pertained to him and not the vestiges of an unwanted past. His head got a bit clearer.


	2. Chapter 2

PART I

Seto was no stranger to the harsh winds of amber Egyptian sands and bits of the particles clinging onto his clothes and parts of his exposed skin. For a good half-year, he had frequented the excavation site of the late pharaoh back on earth, and when certain days were unkind, his search for the millennium puzzle was subject to delay. It was funny how the same physicalities he had felt were the same in another dimension. Predictable. But still somewhat bizarre. In this new world, however, he was alone without his employees or government officials continually and vehemently protesting a puzzle dig up.

The similarities between here and there ceased once he placed one step into the palace of the pharaoh. There was nothing in his mind to glower at the intricacies of ancient Egyptian architecture or note the different fragrances of palace perfume. He didn't come here to satiate sensorial pleasures but instead desired to complete a personal vendetta against the one sitting so calmly on an oversized throne.

Seto never could erase Atem from his mind. It was why he couldn't look at Yugi for very long anymore, as when he first saw traces of Atem in Yugi, he automatically felt impassioned mixes of unvoiced contempt and remorse. He recalled having the urge to duel the little twerp on the spot, in class during an exam.

Silently, he raised his left arm with a dramatic flair and activated his duel disk system.

Atem only rose from his throne and his action was also coupled with no words. If Seto was infamous for his poker face, then Atem surpassed him in that department, for his violet eyes were vacant and he was void of microexpressions. He didn't even step down the small flight of steps leading up to the throne.

"Do I have to greet you with a "your royal highness" or something for you to speak?" Seto asked impatiently, "Or are you afraid to face me?"

The ends of Atem's lips drew up into a small smile, as if to relish in the nearly forgotten sardonic tones of Seto Kaiba. He clutched his hands together behind his back as he carefully tread down the stairs and closer to Seto.

"You are getting really close to perfectly impersonating him, Mahad," Atem observed as a tiny laugh escaped him before continuing, "Although, I have to ask, how did you come up with such a ridiculous ensemble? I remember his outfit being hideous but it looks crazier with that weird technology down your arm and those glowing lines on the torso. Don't tell me he's making duel disks like prosthetics now."

Seto lowered his dueling arm and scrutinized the man in front of him, brandished in some unfit royal regalia. The crown on his head with the millennium eye looked chunky and ready to collapse onto the floor. His entire outfit appeared unfit for his character - from his gaudy, dated jeweled earrings to the gold chains wrapped around his arms glistening. Atem was the last person to comment on his fashion sense.

"Have you seen the mirror lately?"

Atem only laughed, this time greater than the subdued one before. He replied, "Mirrors in an Ancient Egyptian afterlife? My gods, that is exactly something ignorant Kaiba would say. Alright, Mahad, you can stop."

"I'm _not_ Mahad," Seto argued in resignation, "Whoever that is."

"Stubborn today," Atem noted with a frown, "Well, I suppose we _can_ duel, but it's not like you can summon the Blue Eyes White Dragon yourself. You _could_ also pretend to lose and follow with the usual childish tangent about a rematch."

Seto became quiet. _Childish tangent_ repeated in his head for the course of the awkward silence that had instilled between them. It added salt to the wounds of his previous losses. He questioned whether Atem ever took him seriously, but the possibility did not dismay him of his hard work to get to this point. Instead, he felt more vindictive and swore to himself for the thousandth time that he would fulfill his self-created prophecy.

"I should have been the one to send you off pharaoh," Seto grimly said, "Not Yugi. No one else is as worthy as I am."

Atem stood at a standstill with his hands still clenched behind him. His eyebrows were furrowed as he tried to understand why his good friend was so passionate in his role-playing. He questioned whether the gods were playing tricks on him.

"Why do you think you are worthy?"

He was testing Seto's sincerity. The only plausible answer would be one that only Seto could voice, one that not another could perceive. Frankly, it was frustrating on Seto's end.

"Because," Seto questioned, "Did I not bury you the first time?"

A step back ensued from Atem. His hands unclasped as he softly said, "Kaiba."

"Hello," Seto righteously said.

"You surprise me, not just by being here, but by your reason. It makes me think you might believe in our ancient history-"

A small "hmph" escaped from Seto.

"-It _was_ custom for Set as my closest relative to bury me, and in a way, I pleaded with him to bury me again in erasing my name. Perhaps that is why you feel like it should have been you instead of Yugi. However, you _really_ shouldn't be here."

"But I am," Seto confidently stated, "and I don't want to waste my efforts. I've provided you with a duel disk as well. Don't worry about not having a deck. I've already copied your usual one into my new Duel Links system and set it to be available offline in case the afterlife didn't have wifi."

"How thoughtful."

In that instant, Atem walked away and gestured to Seto to follow him. The latter complied with a stringing impatience, as there was still no clear answer to his duel proposal. He followed Atem across corridors and corridors filled with foreign inscriptions, embedding rich history of which he had no care for.

"I didn't come here for a house tour," Seto blurted distastefully as his eyes scanned the picturesque halls while walking. The areas they walked past were absurdly dark with only the flickering flames of torches to aid visualization. He could barely make out the stuff of legends drawn across the walls but bore no remorse in failing to dissect the content on a deeper level.

One display managed to deserve a pause from Seto.

Atem noticed his footsteps stopped and paused himself to look back. In lieu of the dimness of the environment, he wasn't sure in his observance of Seto. The other man had lifted his chin slightly and was in profile position from Atem's viewpoint. Something in the way the flames lit his face extracted a sense of gentleness in Seto's face, particularly in his normally cool steel eyes. Before Atem could walk back and view the fresco that had captured Seto's attention, Seto quickly snapped his head back towards Atem with a hardened expression, silently communicating that they should continue toward wherever Atem was directing them. Without a second thought, Atem abided in his silent sentiment and guided Seto toward a vacant and spacious room quite opposite in ambience of the dark corridors.

It was brightly lit with its lack of ceiling, allowing for the sun to be the only source of warmth and light and permitting for the occasional breeze to drift in and playfully whirl a strand or two of hair atop the pair's heads. The walls were emptied of any inscriptions as well, and there were absolutely no furnishings.

"We could have dueled in the throne room," Seto said in abject misery from having to walk a labyrinth to reach an empty room, "As amazingly realistic I've improved the system, Duel Monsters are still holograms."

"The rules of this world beg to differ," Atem voiced cautiously, "I do not want to make a war out of the throne room where it isn't required."

"Are you seriously telling me Duel Monsters are alive?"

It was a game. Only a game. The only visceral part for Seto was the competitive spirit manifesting into a vengeful hunger that ravished any common sense that other people claimed he lacked. For a game where his pride latched upon like an impudent moth to a flame, Seto still discerned the boundary between fantasy and reality. The innovative wonder that was his Solid Vision technology gleaned on the licensure of reality but did not at all wish to breathe actual life into the card game.

Real monsters were an impossibility in the eyes of a man that liked to defy the impossibility, of a man that had traversed between life and death. Atem noticed the slight hypocrisy dancing in the facial expression of Seto's disbelief.

"If they are," Atem carefully asked, "Would you deny excitement from summoning a live Blue Eyes White Dragon?"

Seto wasted no time in bluntly retorting, "It's a card. A powerful one but still a card."

Wasting no more time with excessive side talk, Seto pulled out from within his elaborate, trademark silver coat another duel disk. It was the same model that he had running down his left arm and thoroughly checked for possible malfunctions prior. He handed the duel disk to Atem, who accepted it with awe across his face.

"How brilliant-"

"I know," Seto smugly cut.

"-how brilliant you are by trying to make the game appear as realistic as possible under the guise of futuristic innovation," Atem continued with a tinge of mockery in his tone, "but you fail to believe some realities of our past."

"Enough with the philosophical talk," Seto sourly declared as he moved across to the opposite end of the room, "Let's duel."

"As you wish."

* * *

The first sign that something was wrong was when Assault Wyvern demolished Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts in a battle sequence that was not programmed by KaibaCorp. In a normal game, Gazelle would have succumbed to defeat by simply disappearing in one glowing blast or some variation. The way his opponent's monster seemed to intellectually respond to his own by ways of complex diversion and retaliation strayed from the nearly boundless limits of Seto's technology.

If the intricate textures of Assault Wyvern's scales or Gazelle's matted fur did not add to the hyperrealism that Seto wanted to deny, then the permanent craters in the ground they stood upon from Assault Wyvern's attacks became evidence that even he couldn't deny. When Gazelle eventually crumbled underneath the superior strength of his Wyvern but in a pace so painstakingly slow that he would never have approved of even in the alpha stage of development, Seto regretfully understood Atem's forewarning.

His eyes drifted down to his left hand that held his cards. His fancy, shiny, glowy digital cards that felt miraculously and impossibly tangible, thanks to his genius invention. He wondered how Atem felt about the digital format, how impressed he was, or the opposite if he were so shamefully old-fashioned.

"When Assault Wyvern destroys a monster in battle, its effect allows me to special summon one dragon-type monster…" Seto announced but drifted off as his gaze concentrated on one particular card.

As his right index finger gingerly caressed the crisp edges of the card, an electrical impulse seemed to traverse from the neurons of his skin to his brain and generated a minute euphoria. At that moment, the child in him bloomed.

The media back home liked to poke fun at his obsession of a beast from some card game. They understood his interest to be one of power, and although that was true, the notion was not cognizant to the depth of his infatuation. Even he himself could not grasp his own irrational interest, as evidenced by unforeseen elation pumping through his circulatory system as he summoned his most loyal servant.

Seto wholeheartedly didn't know what he was expecting. He felt that he should raise his face to the vast sky of the afterlife. It was so ordinarily blue.

Blue was it? Like his favourite color and blue like the his own irises filming

atop two squishy organs on his face.

And the sides of _its_ face, the beast he wept to bed with as an

exploited child.

And another _face_? Whose face?

Cirrus clouds were white and _so wispy_

_and delicate and like elegant wings_

and silvery netting-like hair…..

He wished the clouds were tangible too.

….

…

..

.

" _Wake up."_

" _My pharaoh, I suggest a good smack on that nasty face will do."_

" _I'm afraid the gods will be mad if I were to so bluntly intervene."_

" _Well if his ba is off conversing with the gods, then that's all the more to feign ignorance in trying to wake him with a couple slaps."_

"I can hear you."

Seto awoke to find himself in a disoriented consciousness, barely able to process the room he was in but enough to understand he was laid somewhere comfy and two people were conversing near him. He slowly propped himself up and scanned the room to find two hazy figures, one still recognizable as the pharaoh and the other he could not solve. The despair on his face and his glassy eyes resembled the city clubbers after a night of a voracious drinking with a tinge of illegal drugs shot up their veins. In simpler words, he looked wasted.

"I am surprised you were able to survive a backfire attack from a shadow monster without being magical yourself," said the unknown man, "Or perhaps you physically survived but your memories have been eliminated?"

Seto didn't want to answer, mainly because he felt like if he spoke more than a couple of words, he would hurl profusely. Also, he had no wish to answer to someone he did not know. His hands trembled uncontrollably as he brought them closer to his face.

They were ghastly, or rather, the mess of inscriptions tattooed across his hands in neat vertical bands were ghastly. From the back to the palm, he feverishly flipped them back and forth as if refusing to accept they were his. Hs could only distinguish the marks to be reminiscent of the ones on the palace walls.

"I'm afraid his physical body has not caught up with his reinstated conscience," Atem's voice said. The pharaoh sat in a chair as one hand of his constantly rapped against the arms and he set himself to be economical in his words. He stood up and forwardly admonished, "Kaiba. You will return to Earth in a few minutes, so heed my words carefully."

"I'm not going anywhere until we finish-" Seto promptly snapped his head towards Atem's general direction, only to be shut down by his nausea. His impassioned movement caused him to lull to the side and artfully regurgitate. The other two in the room simply looked away out of pity, and Seto found himself at least partially cured of his ailment and capable of holding more conversation.

Atem slowly returned, "You have consented to an agreement with the gods and the hieroglyphs on your hands are the physical contract. Leaving this realm is one of the conditions."

"Consent? I _never_ enter contracts without knowing every detail."

"You do know every detail, but your body hasn't adjusted. In time, I'm sure you will remember. From what I gathered on your hands, the contract is a fair one."

Seto took one more glance at his hands, thinking he could hurl from his confusion. The roundabout manner in which Atem was communicating aggravated him to no end.

"You can't just tell me what this chicken scratch means so I don't waste my time on a guessing game?"

"I cannot speak for the gods this time, but I can tell you that Hathor in particular smiles upon you-"

"Ok and I'm supposed to know who _that_ is."

"-and that you may return to finish what we started once you satisfy the gods' conditions. Believe me, you _will_ understand everything once you return to Earth. It will all make sense."

There was no comfort in Atem's words. There was no comfort in failing with his original mission and having absolutely no plausible reason behind his failure. Wind whistled inside the room, filling in the silence and raising his goosebumps even underneath his clothes. Seto despised inaccuracies and especially when they were on his end. His hands dropped to the sheets, unfeeling. Questions investigating his shortcomings atomically exploded in his head. He felt the molecules in his body slowly disperse like the first moment he traveled dimensions. The first moment was not even long past, and here he was dissipating back - recoiling.

Feeling that time was running out, Seto raised his face back toward Atem. His vision cleared better as he quietly but sternly asked, "And what about you? Do you not miss your...friends? Because I am being magically whisked away unfairly, I will say that I meant to take you back if you wished."

Atem couldn't remember the last time Seto's facial expressions were as soft. The normal glint of apathetic aberration was subverted to a rare wistfulness. If he wasn't hallucinating as well, Atem believed Seto was trying to communicate another sentiment - one along the lines of " _I, in particular, miss you, and I'm using your friends as an excuse to express this_." If that were true, Atem did not believe Seto missed him correctly. He understood his symbolic place in Seto's life, and it would only drive Seto in a place farther than the afterlife.

"Thank you, Kaiba, but I can wait. I am sure everyone…" Atem drifted for a second as memories of his short time in the modern world resurfaced, "will meet again under the natural order."

The small hesitation caused Seto to narrow his eyes, but he had to be more careful in his words as he felt his body breakdown further. If he were to exit from this world, then he didn't want to do so bedridden. He briskly removed himself from the bed and stood tall.

"Fine then. I promise I'll make you and your gods regret cheating me out of our duel," Seto confidently voiced his last words, unafraid to stare into the abyss of Atem's blank expression and putting on his trademark smirk. As his body disintegrated, Seto wondered why at the last second, he caught Atem's face crumble into disappointment

"I'd be wary of where regret is truly due, Kaiba," Atem somberly muttered as his unwelcome guest left.

"His task is virtually accomplishable by anyone, but his character will make this harder than it really is. Ah, how the gods do like to play."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you, Mahad?" Atem lightheartedly questioned as he sideglanced his friend.

"I was never fond of Set."

* * *

"I can't believe you pretended to mistake him for me so you could mock his wardrobe choices - pharaoh?"

Atem halted in front of the same wall that had drawn Seto. A small scoff evaporated into the air from his lungs after only registering the image for one second. He softly commented, "It's all for his good."

Mahad walked to Atem's side and viewed the same image. He shook his head and cynically provided, "And not for hers."

"I'm afraid you hold bias in your heart."

"No," Mahad disagreed as he ran his hand across the wall. His hand paused above one part of the fresco, one part of an ugly blot of history. He firmly concluded, "History repeats itself."

He removed his hand, as if he had shut her eyes and bade the oddly pale woman illustrated another farewell as she languidly died in the arms of her oblivious slaughterer.


	3. Chapter 3

" _Seto Kaiba."_

"..."

" _You've failed her, and now you can never accomplish what you set out to become."_

"I haven't failed anybody but myself if I'm hallucinating again."

" _The spirit of the Blue Eyes refuses you."_

"This is just a dream, isn't it? Why am I even bothering to speak?"

_"The Blue Eyes White Dragon has repossessed your right to summon her."_

"It's a card."

" _And that is all it will be if you continue this path."_

* * *

Like a rotting fish returned to the sea, life vigorously injected itself into Seto's veins as he stiffly arose from his multidimensional pod - the device that had connected him between this dimension and the other. The fish, however, forgot how to swim as his legs failed him, and he collapsed onto the floor once he stepped out the net. He muttered several curses underneath his breath as he was accompanied by several employees rushing to his side. It would seem that he magically landed back at KaibaCorp. The others must have existed to make sure the system didn't malfunction while he was away and to assure his safe return.

The issue was that Seto didn't want anybody else knowing about this particular project. As two workers grabbed him by the arms to help him stand up, he scanned around the room to identify the culprit responsible for the exposure of his experiment.

"Where is Mokuba?" he asked, making sure to use an assuaged tone as to not launch any rumors of an altercation between the two brothers.

"He's coming right down, sir. This was very surprising, and he's been overseeing operations at your office," one worker provided.

"Tell him I'm going to the duel arenas," Seto quickly settled as he brushed hands away from himself, readjusted his coat, and speed-walked towards an elevator.

One employee tracked him from behind and frantically warned, "Sir, Mr. Mokuba Kaiba has asked us when you did return that you remain here until he comes."

"And Mr. Seto Kaiba has precedence," Seto mockingly responded as he stepped inside the elevator and stared down at the flushed employee before the elevator doors shut. At that moment, his head could only occupy one issue, and it wasn't the unforeseen actions of his little brother.

Once he reached his designated floor, Seto beelined his way toward one empty duel arena, one of numerous used for testing new disks and researching tactics. He prepared his duel disk and set some random, easy A.I. as his opponent so he could quickly summon his Blue Eyes White Dragon.

ERROR flared on his duel disk the first time he tried and continued even when he tried summoning any Blue Eyes variation.

He shut the duel off. Seto fished out his physical deck from an inside pocket of his coat and brought himself down to his knees against the arena floor before fanning out his cards. He accounted for every Blue Eyes card he had, and all were present. As his hands sifted through the cards, he once again noticed the jarring bands of hieroglyphics tattooed across his hands. He chewed the inside cheek of his mouth as he relentlessly continued to disbelieve the voices of his brief dream between now and then. His hands jittered uncontrollably as he brought them closer to his face, and his frustration from his own ignorance escalated.

"Seto…"

A meek, sorry voice emerged directly in front of the elevator. Mokuba Kaiba stood despondently as he watched his older brother on his knees in the midst of an empty duel arena. He had initially wanted to approach with aggression, but Mokuba found himself wavering in response to the invariable behavior of Seto.

"Get me one of the physical duel disks, Mokuba," Seto ordered rather harshly, " _Now._ "

Mokuba complied with reluctance as he delivered what Seto had ordered from the numerous disks lined at the sides of the arena. As he handed the disk to him, Mokuba noticed how Seto didn't even bother to glance at him.

Seto prepared the same duel as before only to end up with the same disappointing errors.

Mokuba resentfully watched Seto fail repeatedly in trying to summon either the original or some variation of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. He thinned his lips as he became terrified of the unexplainable.

"Mokuba."

He shivered.

"Try dueling and summoning Blue Eyes," Seto grimly instructed as he removed the disk from himself and stretched it out toward Mokuba. The way the overhead, fluorescent lighting shined brighter behind Seto's figure made him out to appear ominous as he glowered downwards.

Mokuba glared momentarily at the disk that Seto urged him to carry, feeling as if her were on trial for something he was innocent of. His lips couldn't budge open despite having silently developed arguments for his refusal. In truth, he did not want to blatantly ignore the erraticism of Seto and potentially enable it further by agreeing. He had grown tired of abiding with his older brother, especially when the previous admiration he held for Seto started to fade in congruence with his dwindling naiveté. His hand wavered as he cautiously reached out to accept the duel disk, hating himself for being incapable of a basic "no."

He cowered.

During the process of the duel, Mokuba desperately hoped that he wouldn't be able to successfully summon Blue Eyes. He didn't want to anger Seto anymore than he already was, as he suspected Seto already harbored disapproval of Mokuba's actions during his absence.

Mokuba's heart sunk to the base of his queasy stomach when the imposing digital structure of the Blue Eyes White Dragon generated onto the field once he made the correct sacrifice. Nevermore did he want the dragon to disappear once his older brother started seething from the back.

"Shit," Seto harshly cursed with arms crossed as he looked up toward the dragon, "Is this some kind of joke?!"

Mokuba was entirely unsure where the anger was targeted toward. In a deadpanned tone, he attempted to change subjects, "What happened back there?"

"What happened is that I've been cheated out of this blasted game," Seto inadequately explained as he walked closer to his brother, dispatched the duel disk, and shut the duel off.

"What?" Mokuba quietly asked, figuring that any detailed question would end up fruitless with Seto's current attitude.

Seto removed his physical deck from the disk, placed his Blue Eyes cards atop, and returned the rest of his cards to the deck holder inside the flap of his coat. The card illustration of the dragon appeared to be laughing at him, as if it were some separate entity with agency. As his eyes drifted from the cards to his own hands, he peered toward Mokuba.

"Do you see these?" Seto questioned as he widely stretched his hand, making dramatic back-and-forth gestures to display the foreign inscriptions.

"Your hands?" a perplexed Mokuba answered and felt deeply offended that he was continually ignored. Despite trying to put on an impassive front, he felt that Seto should have at the least detected a trace of distress. He soon realized that he maybe had overestimated the other's charitable qualities.

Mokuba's confusion was enough to indicate to Seto that only the latter could exclusively see the markings on his hand. Seto huffed in his own bafflement and indignantly walked away towards the elevator.

In a fit of determination, Mokuba followed and hurriedly barked, "Wait, Seto! I need to know what's going on! Don't you dare walk away from me after disappearing for a whole month!"

Seto abruptly stopped in front of the elevator as _a whole month_ rung in his head. He turned to see Mokuba catch up to him with a cross expression but he could only prioritize his personal stacking complications after realizing the slew of corporate issues that he would have to deal with once returning.

He had a plan in case his multidimensional trip failed terribly. It would have been publicly declared that there was some sort of accidental death, or if he did return after a long absence, it would have been plausibly argued that he was away on some secret business trip. Both plans could have happened if others did not know of his afterlife voyage, if the project remained between the two brothers, and if Mokuba kept his mouth shut.

"I'm not wasting my breath on you, Mokuba," Seto furiously snapped, "And believe me, you don't want me to with how you so blatantly ignored my wish that the multidimensional system be kept secret."

"I couldn't maintain the system back home by myself! The whole thing was prematurely tested and completely unstable! You're lucky to be back alive!"

"By letting others know, you've provided a way for people to gossip. It was already difficult and costly to have the space station approved but once this gets out, I have to prepare for all the ethical lawsuits that'll blow up. Do you know how many governments will be aching to sue me for having something as subjectively threatening as a multidimensional transporter? As if my attorneys aren't still fending off lawsuits about the space elevator, and as if my ownership of the Quantum Cube is undoubtedly being investigated by the likes of Yugi Muto! "

"I made sure the workers signed a confidentiality agreement, and if you're so worried about lawsuits, then maybe this whole project shouldn't have started in the first place!" Mokuba firmly shouted, quickly wanting to eat the last bit of retaliation. Despite hating the importance of the whole dead-pharaoh-ordeal from the initial stages of excavating for the millennium puzzle, he knew it meant the world to Seto but it was simply too much to handle anymore. He couldn't help but belt out disapproval even in a childish way.

It became clear now that Mokuba was always opposed to Seto, and with that notion and his aching frustration, Seto viewed Mokuba completely incapable of handling his current problem. He never should have expected the budding preteen to validate his personal convictions, and it was simply unfair he even believed a morsel of possibility that Mokuba would understand.

"That's enough," Seto sternly demanded, "We're finished. I'll be staying here for as long as I have to catch up with work issues, so go home without me."

If he were younger, Mokuba perceived that he would have relentlessly followed and begged for forgiveness. He didn't blink as the elevator doors closed. Now he stood still and by his newly formed beliefs, alone and negligible in comparison to the vast, vacant space of the duel arena. His newfound gumption, however, still could not suppress the suffocating feeling of his throat and the tears unfallen but pricking.

* * *

A good count of three drugstore, third party brand beer cans were strewn across his office desk, and Seto was about to celebrate his fourth one until someone came strolling in. He quickly knocked the empty cans into his trash before calmly settling into his cushioned swivel chair.

Right-hand man Isono Ishikawa carefully eyed his boss' very visible trash can, inwardly desiring to laugh. It was amusing to him that Seto desired only the highest quality and most expensive wines during business celebrations and charity balls but found comfort in the crappiest of commercialized beers during private hours. Naturally, Isono feigned ignorance to spare Seto's self-image of prestige and exclusivity.

"Mokuba went home."

Seto tapped the cartridge of his beer hidden underneath his desk. He found himself replaying his earlier conversation with Mokuba constantly once he was done with business meetings and the like for the day. It was already an ominous hour but he felt too vexed to retire for the night.

"Good," Seto briefly said. He hesitantly added, "Do you think I've been doing this right?"

"Raising young Mokuba?"

Seto slowly nodded, immediately regretting that he even bothered to ask in the first place. He didn't know anyone else that had watched the two brothers for as long as Isono had, although he didn't really regard Isono as some pseudo-father figure in their lives. The employee, in Seto's eyes, was simply a longtime observer. He never even asked how much Isono valued the two brothers, or even just himself, beyond the scope of a working relationship. With a glimmer of rare optimistic hope, Seto wished at that moment Isono had something worthwhile to say.

"No one does it right, sir," Isono gently provided, "As someone who always wants to be right, I'm sure you don't want to hear that but that's just the nature of raising a kid. If I may also add, don't forget how young you are either and that you both are brothers - not parent-child."

That only left Seto to spin on other thoughts for the night.

"Are you staying here for tonight?" Isono asked as he readily collected a thick blanket from the office closet.

"Yes. Thank you, Isono. You may leave."

Once Isono placed the blanket on the office futon and bade his boss for the night, he exited.

Seto sighed in relief once he was left to himself to consume his beer. It was about three-quarters of guzzling the nasty substance down when he had reached a spectacular solution to his predicament. Throughout the day, he had been plagued by what to do with the contract written on his hands. No one else seemed to notice. He couldn't understand a lick of the language and had virtually no time during catch-up with work to really figure out how to read it.

Sometime afterwards, he did manage to snag some people to contact some linguists. He was sure someone would call his office soon but he hated waiting around.

It didn't occur to him until now that he already knew someone of the like, and she was probably more of an expert than anybody else in the world. He pulled out his phone and sifted through his contact list, ready to hit the call button once he found his desired person.

His thumb hesitated for a bit before eventually hitting the call.

The ringing was incessant and would continue for three unanswered iterations. He didn't want to settle with the thought that she was sleeping or busy and only thought of himself. It wasn't like she was back in Egypt or anything either, as the Domino Museum needed tremendous oversight for yet another Ancient Egyptian exhibit, so there was no difference in time zones. He figured, however, that it was sort of a miracle she hadn't blocked his number after the trouble he had caused her.

Seto pulled out two sheets of paper from his desk and took out a pen as well. He placed his left hand against one paper and crudely traced out its shape and did the same with the other sheet and his right hand. Then, he used a pair of scissors to cut along the lines of the hand shape, feeling like he was a kindergartener doing an abysmal job. He did his best to reference the inscriptions on his hands, and once he finished scrawling, he took photos and texted them to her number.

It didn't take long for his phone to ring. With a victorious smirk, he raised the phone up to his ear.

"Where did you get this?" a tired voice came from the other end.

"Good evening, Ms. Ishtar," Seto coyly greeted while delighting in the fact he sparked her curiosity.

"It is far later than evening. Answer my question," impatience chided from her.

"These are symbols on my hands. They are not visible to others and cannot be captured by camera."

A huge sigh ensued from Ishizu Ishtar. She said, "I would think you a liar if not for the authenticity of the language."

"Decipher it for me."

"And why should I? I've done enough for you."

"Did you forget who's funding your little exhibit? That interactive environment simulation is not cheap tech," Seto impertinently reasoned, knowing somewhat that he couldn't necessarily soothe the emotional wreck he had caused her even with money.

As predicted, he was shot back by a fiery response.

"Did you forget who almost got federal ramifications from the Egyptian government for allowing a foreign man to do a massive excavation? Need I remind you, I did not initially give you permission to dig up the puzzle. I had to pretend I did in order to prevent you from persecution! And as I tried to frequently contact you or your office this past month, I was told nothing of where you were! Your money is replaceable. There are several other organizations I can get grants from!"

Seto argued, " _Almost_ is the key word. In the end, you're fine. I'm fine. Besides, is it not my birthright or something to that tomb? I have a claim to where the puzzle was more than you or your family. Who was a pharaoh again in his past life?"

"Since when did you believe the whole past life ordeal? You're only using it for personal advances."

"Yes, and can you really fault me for that?" Seto mockingly toyed but soon realized they were veering from his main point. He reiterated, "Listen, can you just translate this for me? It's important."

"You sure are rude for someone requesting a favor."

"...Please?"

Seto was met with complete silence. He didn't know whether Ishizu was considering cutting the call or if she had the decency to review the photos he sent. He sat in interlude and sipped the remaining contents of his beer. It was around two minutes later she finally spoke, and he set her on speaker. He kept his pen in hand as he started scrawling whatever she had to say on one of the scraps of paper he cut out.

"Interestingly, this is a contract. I say it's intriguing because virtually all contracts then were written in Demotic script. I've never seen one so formally written in hieroglyphics, and the language is a bit too archaic for even me to translate. It's impressive."

Seto hoped she was getting somewhere that he actually cared about and regretted that he actually wrote down the useless tidbit.

"But from what I can interpret, it appears to be something between the gods and a mortal. The mortal has been revoked the right to summon a certain shadow monster. The only way he may be granted the privilege back is if he were to appease the spirit of the monster."

"How did the conditions come to be?"

"Well it's detailed that the mortal didn't have original affinity with this spirit, and it was originally gifted to him. I suppose that makes it easier to rescind."

"I highly doubt it was gifted," Seto took offense. His methods in attaining the original three cards were less than legal but they were undoubtedly an effort.

"The contract says otherwise. Perhaps in a past life?" Ishizu sardonically hinted, "Also, it states that the mortal has betrayed the spirit in some way and has offended the gods."

"How so?"

"That part is not explicitly detailed," Ishizu shortly said. With a pause, she asked, "Is the mortal you?"

He had already explained the words were written across his hands. He sarcastically praised, "Amazing conclusion." With a long glance at his hands again, he followed, "What does it mean by "spirit of the monster?"

"The Ka. But in this case, you would seek the human vessel for it, someone who is especially ideal to house the spirit," she explained, "In ancient times, you would have needed to use the Millennium Key to even see a Ka, assuming you find the correct person. It would be difficult to identify such a person in modern times since anyone can use a card to summon the monster in game. That is, if this contract applies to modern times. I'm assuming it does if it's for you, which by the way, how did this contract come to be?"

Seto mulled over Ishizu's explanation and quietly avoided her question. He didn't understand who he was supposed to find and decided that despite Ishizu's translation, he found the contents of the contract to still be vague. Specificity apparently wasn't a priority for the Egyptian gods. He walked over to his trusty mini-fridge and whipped out another can of beer.

Ishizu mused as if to quell the awkwardness, "If the Ka is the Blue Eyes White Dragon, I guess you could start searching for someone with blue eyes and white hair but it's not guaranteed appearances reflect the monster."

His mind clicked simultaneously with the opening of his beer. A smirk drew on his face, and it finally felt good to arrive at a plausible answer, albeit one of speculation. He returned to his desk and leaned comfortably back into his chair.

"I think they do, actually," he confidently said, "and all I have to do is appease her? Is there a specification on that?"

"Oh, it's a _her_ ," Ishizu teased with a small chuckle, "Yes, all you have to do is appease her. It doesn't seem like there's any detail on that but I suppose that's the crafty beauty of divine treaties."

"Fine by me," Seto insisted with a satisfied gulp of his beer, "I have money and power. That gives me considerable ease. Thank you, Ishizu."

Before he could hang up, she calmly requested, "What about my favor?"

"Name it."

"Dinner."

"I'll check my schedule."

"Good night, Seto."

He quickly logged into his computer to send an email to one of his trusted private investigators regarding the person he had in mind. The whole contract spiel would be over soon, and it wouldn't take long for him to regain authority over the dragon. He couldn't help but pity Atem and his gods, as a simplistic deal with one of the most powerful men in the world was simply nothing. Once he sent the email, he expected a full character study of the person in question, and it would surely be more than enough information for him to find the best and quickest way to please her. With enough excitement to spur his own small investigation, Seto searched up her name. He figured he would find some sort of social media that could perhaps point towards what he could expect. To his unwelcome astonishment, he found that Google had far more results than he expected of presumably a nobody, and the content of the first couple links sent him chugging down the rest of his fifth can of shitty third-rate beer.

* * *

The acute and deafening iron skid of the barrier between her and the rest of the world induced the prisoner to wake from her usual nightmarish sequence. With only a fraction of a second to relish the smallest bit of sunshine streaming in dust particles through her minuscule window, the warden had already entered the cell and begged her to come off from her bed by the sharp tug of her hair. She didn't dare to release the quietest of yelps nor did she permit herself to grimace. Instead, the prisoner mutely yielded to her gatekeeper.

Draconian discipline. She read that term in high school in one critical international review of the Japanese prison system. She thought it to be a rather Western-biased and charged term at the time and didn't think much of it until she found herself making friends with the occasional roach on her bedside. It was dangerous to think so much in a place one couldn't exercise freewill, however, so she always left her treatment to the term alone. Draconian discipline.

Her head hung low and her eyes continually admired the simplicity of the grey floor, the mid-tone of black and white and the nature of reality - hers. The way the warden kept her hands snugly tied with handcuffs and the way she forcefully shoved her toward some destination couldn't incite any feeling in the deadbeat girl.

Eventually she was brought somewhere unfamiliar and was duly stuffed into a chair, unexpectedly left alone. Not even the indicating sound of the door shut behind her raised her spirits. If her keeper exited, surely another was around. She found herself glaring down at a bright beige desk underneath yet her eyes were still deprived of inquiry, and her head felt as heavy as ever.

Some sound tried to get to her. It was almost a murmur. A roguish joke.

"Nice haircut."

She lifted her face in a painstakingly slow manner, undecided of the other person's sentiment. After a long while, as it always felt in a place bereft of time, she felt a rare sentience sprout from the corpse of her passions in recognizing the man behind the foggy glass wall.

"I'm Seto-"

"Kaiba," she meekly interrupted in a croaked whisper. In an even quieter hush, she imparted with sore, cracked lips, " _Everybody knows."_

He laughed.


	4. Chapter 4

Ishizu was a woman of twenty-three and had the wits of the finest scholars. For someone kept reclusive for the younger part of her life, she had the desire to consume information as much as she could. Endless nights studying and writing for her university courses culminated in her independent research, in which she poured herself into by personal convictions. Her tenacity, however, didn't praise her for dealing with underage alcoholics.

Dressed for a late night at work, she had on a reasonable cream dress shirt and seal brown pants. Modest was the defining trait to her wardrobe. Her dinner guest didn't urge her to dress in any other way, and she was completely sure of such notion when her eyes landed on him - the desolate man with one hand rested upon his temples and the other flat atop the bar counter with the stem of a wine glass in between his index and middle finger. He appeared to have been dressed for work as well, nothing special from the usual corporate man but unlike her, recently finished his shift.

"I would ask how you purchase alcohol while being under the legal age but I already know your answer," Ishizu proclaimed as she meandered toward the bar area. She slid onto the stool next to his and took a gander at the menu, smoothly mimicking him, "Because I'm Seto Kaiba."

It was a nice fusion restaurant they were at, more than nice with the menu prices exceeding what she would normally be comfortable with on a curator's salary. Although the place was not one of those swanky restaurants gracing atop skyscrapers, she was certain she would have never considered it. She didn't exactly understand what cultures were being fused but she understood the prices must have applied in a similar manner to most of Domino as well, as few people actually dined and only one other person sat at the bar, far away from the two. Ishizu would have preferred to dine traditionally at a table but she wasn't paying for her own meal tonight.

"I thought you stopped with the whole fortune-telling business," Seto derisively replied as the one hand on his forehead shifted to readjust his black cap as one corner of his lips took an amused turn up. When dining out for personal purposes, he had no desire for others to recognize him. He didn't seem to want to glance her away with his eyes completely glued onto his wine glass. He mentioned, "I recommend Set B."

"Not Set O?" Ishizu lamely returned. She ordered his recommendation and continued, "So why are you brooding like a child?"

"I met her yesterday."

She paid attention to his hands. They were barren and perfectly smooth to look at. Slender and delicate, his hands were the butt of occasional internet jokes. She recalled her younger brother mentioning some sort of satirical online ranking of the most aesthetic duelist hands. At least, if anything, Seto ranked at the top for that. A smirk drew up at the ends of her lips before attempting to converse.

"Don't ask me how I know it's her," Seto briefly insisted before Ishizu could say anything, "I just do."

The way he continually and purposefully cast his sights away from her made Ishizu think he was ashamed for his words. She would not be surprised if he was, as what he enunciated implied his decision was based on faith rather than rationality.

"What did she want?" she asked.

Firstly, he sipped his overpriced, vintage thirty-three-year old malt whiskey.

* * *

The arrangements were hardly troublesome to initiate. When his private investigator had informed him of her entire profile through both establishing a vocal debrief and a thorough research paper, Seto believed his biggest obstacle was simply the meeting, and such preparation would not even cost his personal time. He had his underlings to organize the situation, and the only worrying aspect was that they themselves would find the arrangement so difficult that he would have to find new ones. That was barely an issue anyways as long as he paid them handsomely.

He always got what he wanted anyways.

His de facto conceit did not relinquish even as he sat in one of the most foreboding rooms he had ever had the pleasure to stay in while awaiting a convict. The floor tiles of the room were a ghastly checkered pattern of faded urine yellow and puke saturated green while the walls were some raggedy, flat combination of both. The windows were equally depressing, as they were only skinny rectangles cornering atop the walls. Normally, other people would have been there, other people who had their own prisoners to correspond with. His own people made sure there wouldn't be those meetings while he was there but Seto had really wanted something more private. This was the best the system could permit apparently.

His saving grace was that the door on the other side of the glass wall finally cracked open. Seto found his back slightly straightened, although at the time he didn't think he had any respectable expectations. He promised himself prior that he wouldn't be concerned by anything like physical change but when he saw his prisoner's dilapidated state, he found himself regressing into a derogatory joke in order to suppress himself from expressing other appalled feelings.

* * *

"You said _nice haircut_?" Ishizu scandalized with her mouth hung open, "You do know it most likely wasn't voluntary?"

"Not at the damn time," Seto quickly snapped.

* * *

It was only the white hue of her hair and the somber blue eyes he could compare to that one day in December. At another time, he believed her now chin-length hair would have given her a youthful glow. Instead, less hair called attention to her more dismantled features. Her skin had always been pale but now appeared nearly inhuman with its tint of greenish yellow, or perhaps it was the room and her spirits that made it so? As her face lifted up, he refrained from showing evident discomfort at her newly sunken cheeks and disparaging undereye circles and puffy eye bags and dry patches surrounding the rim of her nose and colorless, cracked flesh for lips.

He never thought her particularly pretty before but the change still astounded him more than it should've, almost enough to break his obstinate stare. As a means to compose himself and despite thinking it unnecessary, he attempted to formally introduce himself, "I'm Seto-"

"Kaiba," she said so quietly he nearly overstepped her response.

He waited for something remarkable.

"Everybody knows."

For something as obvious as what she said and a notion that he relished in, discomfort permeated him as he forcibly laughed in reaction. He assumed she meant it as humour.

"Then you'll know I like to be direct," he attempted to lightheartedly return, although his statement was also sober. Without wasting another breath, he initiated, "I'm offering my resources to help your case. I know you've been sentenced already but there's a possibility we can have a retrial."

To his utter irritation, silence pervaded the dingy room for far too long and her eyes could not even meet his. As if to rattle him further, the meek woman gave minimal effort in her one-worded question, "We?"

"My esteemed lawyers and the paycheck I give them. With your permission to hire them of course."

As if he couldn't be any clearer, she appeared dumbfounded in her additional, prolonged soundlessness. With his clasped hands atop the desk, he found himself counting each second pass by the twiddling of his thumbs. Unlike his desire for her physical appearance, he absolutely did hold prior expectations to her vocal responses. Frankly, however, he had his assumptions from very minimal personal experience with her disposition and only had her profile albeit a very thorough one to infer from.

Still, in his expectations, he thought that she would be leaping at his offer or at least would ask multiple questions that were structurally far longer and more complex than one word. He thought that she would have been relishing in gratitude. Without a decent indication to suppose that she would finally start to converse, he took the initiative to explicate further, "You might be wondering why someone like me would be interested in your case or why I even bothered to come here personally."

A couple of downcast blinks were her only response.

"Well, I'm here because it's come to my attention that I unknowingly played a part in your conviction. I gave you a coat back in December. The prosecution used it as evidence against your case. They argued that someone by your financial status could not splurge on an expensive designer coat, and it was suggested as stolen by your implausible story."

Pause.

"I was honest about that," she barely murmured.

"Unfortunately for you, I was not available in the last month, so I couldn't confirm that I gave you the coat. Let's just say, in simple words, I feel bad. I had people take a closer look at your case, and there's enough suspicion that you've been mishandled."

Pause.

"I'm sorry that you wasted your resources on me, Mr. Kaiba. But I am guilty."

"I don't believe you," he calmly said, undeterred, "Are you afraid of that family? Are they threatening to keep you here? I'll have you know I have greater influence than them in this city."

Pause.

"I'm afraid I'm the one that abused their trust."

"Ms. Sanada-"

Much to his surprise, there was no pause as she interrupted, "It's Kisara. Give me that if you'll offer me anything again."

He thought it was the most unnecessary interruption he had ever been granted and didn't think much of it. With slight agitation, he asked in a nearly rhetorical fashion, "Do you not want out?"

Pause.

"I want to stay here."

"No, you don't," he hastily retorted. At that instant, she finally lifted her face towards him. The slightest twitch of her brow indicated her perplexity, and it was his turn to look away. He glanced down toward his folded hands, now about strained from the clenching he put them through and still riddled with the markings. Quickly, his eyes flickered back to hers and said, "I mean...if you need further assistance when you get out, I can provide that too, although the money you'd get from winning the lawsuit would make you more than comfortable."

Pause.

"I'm sorry," she breathed out sincerely.

As a final insult to him, she paid him one slight bow once she got up before leaving to voluntarily return to her entrapment. The wrinkles strewn across the back of her tan prison uniform ached him, and he immediately stood up, causing his chair to skid back and create an ear wrenching screech.

"Wait! You can't be serious! You're facing 45 years!" he exclaimed. His words had no effect on her as he noticed one hand of hers rested on the door handle.

"Kisara!" he bellowed out her first name in a volume and intensity so thick he imagined the sound waves reflecting back to him from the glass wall separating the two. In any other moment, he would have reprimanded himself for sounding the least bit desperate. "You know I won't give up here," he declared confidently, rather by pseudo means in order to trick both himself and her that he wasn't at all the slightest bit unhinged. He slid both his hands into his pants pockets as he conclusively stated, "and on you."

He didn't realize at the time how badly he wanted her to turn around, to give him some hint of emotion, _any_ emotion - remorse or gratitude or annoyance, anything would have left him more satisfied than her token ambivalence -

Of which she further demonstrated by leaving him.

* * *

"The arsonist?!" Ishizu harshly whispered. Her fork clattered against her nearly empty dinner plate. She tried her best to compose herself as she leaned closer to Seto while continually questioning, "You mean the girl who sent that home in flames? The girl who also stole their valuables? And killed some of the family members in the process? _That_ Kisara Sanada?"

"She's innocent," Seto plainly protested, just about believing he had inhaled more alcohol than actual food as he felt the usual dizziness kick in.

"She admitted guilt."

"Underneath a plea bargain. With that crappy public lawyer she had, there's no way he would've won her case, and she would've gotten life. Maybe even the death sentence."

"She wouldn't have chosen to stay if she was not guilty of something. Use your logic. That plea bargain was a blessing. She is lucky her fire didn't spread."

"What if the justice system failed her and that the media perpetrated her? Our criminals are tried on guilty until proven innocent, not vice versa."

"Don't operate off of personal feelings," Ishizu ardently advised, yet knew full well most of her words would not change any agenda he had probably constructed beforehand, "Are you really one to suddenly be interested in the flaws and failures of the justice system and media? Or are you just doing this to satisfy yourself? If you and your lawyers feign her innocence, you are releasing a felon into society. Not to mention, the people of Domino despise her and were all for her sentence."

"It's not that I'm faking her innocence, it's that I know she is. That's why it drives me mad that she insists the opposite. Also, people eat shit like this all the time. It'll be a matter of time when their opinion changes, or they move on to the next disaster," Seto calmly replied and raised his hand for their check, still continuing to ignore Ishizu's feverish stare.

Ishizu narrowed her eyes as she observed the neon blue under-lighting from the bar counter outlining his figure from below in opposition with the overhead, scarlet lighting. As he slid his credit card to the bartender, she revelled in the newfound reality of their roles reversed. She considered herself a woman of immense faith. She still held onto her family's globally extinct religion, she still engaged in superstitious practices to glimpse at myriads of the future or past and about other people, and most importantly, she was sure she had a stronghold on the notions of fate and destiny.

"And what if you're wrong?"

Being wrong wasn't his prerogative, or at least not in his self-image. He said, "I always get what I want," and signed off the receipt.

* * *

Ishizu sighed as May's breeze trickled down her spine. The sidewalks of Domino were barren at the time, so she felt comfortable pausing near the entrance of the restaurant and calling him from behind, "Seto."

The blue of his phone screen had the same effect on him as the bar area once he turned his head.

She said, "I know you didn't want me to ask but I don't understand why you have such strong faith that it's her."

"I'm not obligated to convince you."

"Maybe so," she slowly nodded, not expecting a decent answer. She simply stated, "Fate must be guiding you."

His intense glower for a response satisfied her and caused her to slyly smirk.

"I haven't come across any recorded history of pale girls with bright blue eyes and white hair during Pharaoh Seth's time but I believe she must only be alive in your mind with how stubborn you are," she mused while continuing to relish in his displeasure before saying, "Take care."

As she started to walk away into the streets, Seto hurriedly asked, "Are you seriously walking to the museum at this hour? I can offer a ride there."

"The museum isn't far, and it's a good night for a stroll."

Without much thought, Seto followed alongside her most of the way toward the museum. He made up for the time he spent talking about that other woman by listening to her own work stories and exchanging his own company qualms. Perhaps the walk would do him good as well and being with someone else would take his mind off things more healthily than alcohol, especially when that someone else was as tolerable as Ishizu. She was right in her statement that the night was perfect for a small walk, especially when it had been a while, even before the afterlife, that he got to enjoy a normal moment in the city he had heavily capitalized.

* * *

"It's late."

Seto found Mokuba situated in the kitchen area of their home and clutching a bunch of undoubtedly sugary snacks in his arms. He figured Mokuba decided to be the first to call him out so that Seto wouldn't comment on his late night eating habits - not that he was someone fit to lecture anyone about unhealthy habits.

"No, really?"

"Work wasn't supposed to run late. I called the office, and they said you left at the usual time."

"I wasn't working. I had dinner with Ishizu Ishtar if you remember her."

He did remember her but only recalled her most basic character, one largely pertaining to how Seto used to hold quite querulous video conferences with her during the puzzle quest. Of what he could remember, he couldn't glean any pleasurable, lasting impression Ishizu had left on Seto bold enough to institute a decent relationship. He could only utter a simple, "Why?"

"Business," Seto tensely replied, grabbing a glass from the cupboards.

Everything Seto did had some ulterior motive so his answer didn't relax Mokuba any better. He clenched his jaw, believing that Seto was now withholding even work relations after the unsolved rift they had last week. Their little spat was never resolved with both parties refraining from mentioning it ever again but both still expected some deference from the other side.

"What kind of business would require dinner?" Mokuba queried. His preconceived notion of "business" between the two consisted of the weary topic of the pharaoh but the personal meeting Seto claimed suggested otherwise. He knew Seto wouldn't have wasted precious time on dinner with some museum curator. There were more convenient ways to conduct business.

"I have meals with partners all the time, Mokuba. You should know that. It's customary."

"She's not a damn CEO or chairman," Mokuba said rather severely, silently reprimanding himself for his own tone that suddenly mirrored Seto's typical abrasiveness. He didn't want to blatantly state his suspicion, so he instead unrelatedly insinuated, "Well. Off-topic but I wouldn't mind having dinner with someone as pretty and smart as Ishizu."

"I'll invite her over sometime then."

Mokuba blankly stared at his brother filling a glass with water from the refrigerator, unable to figure out his seriousness or lack thereof. Seto calmly gulped down the water before yawning and checking his watch. The younger one never imagined they would ever converse about women. He didn't know which was the norm between siblings - to talk about them or not. He himself didn't ever bring up anything about girls with full expectation that Seto probably didn't care. Much of what he had learned thus far was largely due to his classmates and the internet. If anything, their mutual dissonance regarding the subject spurned awkwardness.

"Am I reading this wrong?"

Seto was not oblivious to what Mokuba was heading towards. With a slight shrug, he pointed out, "Maybe I don't like pretty and smart."

"Whatever," Mokuba muttered in disbelief, believing it futile to figure out Seto's roundabout mannerism, "I'm going to bed."

"Sure you are."

Seto shook his head as he watched Mokuba disappear upwards the colossal and unnecessarily grand staircase, one of many in the Kaiba Manor. He hated the place - hated living in it. For as useful as the mansion was to hold some of his experiments, he would rather spend his nights at his office and actually believed he slept better there. He felt a little queasy as he perceived how the cup in his hand was probably here before him and quenched the needs of the previous owner.

He chucked it rather roughly into the sink and fully expected one of the maids to give him an earful about it in the morning. It wasn't his fault his mind sometimes got him thinking too deeply.

It wasn't his fault that when he slipped underneath his bed covers, he immediately sat up and observed how the shadows of his egregiously massive windows spilled like ink over his powder blue sheets, for he wondered tonight, and the previous night, if Kisara even had a window to grant her similar silhouettes in his imagining of her cell. Shame invigorated his thoughts clouded by her, for he found himself falling into curiosity. He knew every detail of her life but couldn't wrap his mind around how to dissect her after their first meeting. No private investigation could fully encapsulate the breadth of someone's psyche. His hands smoothed out the wrinkles of his sheets as they too bathed in with the shadows, and he relapsed into thinking about her prison uniform. He, perhaps in combination with physical fatigue, questioned if she was even real, for she didn't act or look the part. If his arm could have transcended the glass barrier and reach her shoulder, he supposed he'd be clutching oxygen.

"Shut the fucking curtains," he loudly groaned to whatever voice recognition system he had installed in the room and drowned himself underneath his sheets, unable to nod off to the buzz of the curtains tapering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I struggled during this chapter because I'm trying to get a sense of the story's pacing, and I really want to get more to the relationship parts but I've got this whole setup in mind. I wanted to to get this out before my other responsibilities get too demanding as well. Anyways, I hope anybody reading this is taking care of themselves during these times, and thanks for taking the time to read this.


	5. Chapter 5

"What are _you_ doing here?"

Seto didn't expect Jonouchi at the front desk of the Domino City police station. It had been about a week since he had last visited Kisara in prison, and he was more than frustrated by the fact that he had to settle with whoever was at the top of the department personally. He had to make sure he wasn't hallucinating Jonouchi.

He hadn't seen the irritation since high school. If anything, he had forgotten a lot about him, except for distaste. So when Jonouchi had his arms crossed with a fairly judgemental expression, Seto made sure he held his head high as walked near the desk.

"I could ask the same of you," Seto stiffly replied, "You should be behind bars instead of that desk with how criminal your 'professional' attire is."

Jonouchi momentarily uncrossed his arms and glanced down at his outfit, which notably included a wrinkled graphic t-shirt with the Burger World logo that Anzu had gifted him and a pair of wrinkled blue jeans. He scowled and immediately folded his arms again.

"Not that you would care but I'm interning here a bit before I decide if being an officer's worth it. Gotta pay the bills when it isn't dueling season."

"You're right. I don't care."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Whatever business I have here has nothing to do with someone of your level."

"Actually, it does. I'm the guy between you and the superintendent."

"Are you serious? You're lying," Seto accused.

The two had a decent staring contest for about ten more seconds until someone else, a woman with more acceptable professional clothes appeared at the front. She smiled at Seto while patting Jonouchi on the back. Without any idea, she asked, "Do you two know each other?"

"Yes."

"No."

With conflicting answers, the former by Jonouchi and the latter by Seto, the woman slightly furrowed her brows from confusion. Without a desire to press on, she continued, "Hello Mr. Kaiba. Could you please state your reason for being here?"

Jonouchi ignored Seto's smug glare and retreated back to shuffle some papers. He still had his ear on the conversation as Seto said, "I need to speak with the superintendent of this place. Mr. Watanabe. He should know."

"Alright, I'll buzz you in," the lady complied and phoned in to the superintendent, "Mr. Kaiba is here, sir. Yes, for the reinvestigation."

Jonouchi's head immediately snapped up, glancing back and forth between his supervisor and Seto. He noticed how Seto avoided looking his way, but any notion that Seto didn't want to answer anything more didn't prevent Jonouchi from hurriedly walking up to the front. His palms pressed against the desk as he slightly leaned forward and softly cursed, " _Shit._ Why are you involved?"

"I'm the one funding the reinvestigation and the reason why your internship will probably be more interesting," Seto irritably answered, "Now do your job."

"You're free to go to the office, Mr. Kaiba. Mr. Watanabe's office is just down the hall. You can't miss it," the lady affirmed as she shot a disapproving look at Jonouchi.

Without another word and a classic smirk, Seto left Jonouchi to mull over their conversation. As he walked through the corridors of the police station, he could vaguely remember the last instance he was in a place like this. The whirr of papers shuffling and officers flitting about was familiar along with the light stench of coffee - maybe not so light since it made his nose wrinkle. He understood it was a long time ago, but he hadn't the mental priority to resurrect the memory. His hand wrapped around the doorknob of the superintendent's office, and he dispensed any notions irrelevant to his current case.

A fairly middle-aged man sat comfortably at his desk, barely giving Seto any acknowledgment as his eyes were glued on his laptop, and he only pointed at an opposing chair for Seto to sit at. Seto unhappily sat in the chair and felt uncomfortable in the minor role reversal. Normally he was the one behind the desk.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kaiba."

"I want this over with quickly. I don't see why we couldn't resolve this over a phone call. I'm sure my people made my points apparent, and I've already notified your office I was open for calls."

"Maybe I just wanted to make an excuse to meet the esteemed Seto Kaiba in person."

"You want an autograph or something?"

Watanabe chuckled and closed his laptop. He had an owlish look to him with his circular gold frames sitting comfortably low on his nose and a beard of scraggly gray hair. His face was aged and masked by a veneer of politeness that Seto immediately caught. Watanabe answered, "No, but maybe my five-year-old son does. He admires you and wants to make something like those duel disks in the future."

"I'll make sure to send him the newest duel disk, signed," Seto said, "But I could've done that without being here."

Watanabe's tone darkly switched, "You're like everyone says you are - the type of person who demands even when he's in no position to."

"Maybe that's why your son admires me instead of his own father, who can't answer a simple question."

Watanabe nodded his head in a lull-like trance, patiently absorbing the snide wit of his guest. He closed his eyes for a bit before pulling out a drawer and retrieving a file. He slid the cream file toward Seto, who took it and examined the contents. His eyes barely glazed over each piece, barely making anything of it. Meanwhile, Watanabe mentioned, "Those photos were too explicit to show in the media, and the department couldn't risk sending those through mail."

"Is this supposed to convince me to back off?" Seto asked deadpanned. He carelessly tossed the file back onto the desk, causing the slew of photos and documents to fall out. "A couple of pictures?"

Watanabe rolled the mess of documents back into the file. He held up some photos with both hands and sternly said, "These are the Nishikino children. The burn victims. These were the children that the girl had responsibility over, and now they're too ashamed to be seen in public with how severe their scars are from the fire she purposefully set."

"The girl is innocent."

"You do realize that you are asking for an immense effort by my department, Mr. Kaiba?"

"Yes, and I have immense money to fund it. I don't see the problem."

"It isn't the money or the resources. It's the problematic implications when the public finds out. The press has to cover our investigations so that the people are informed."

"Then don't let the press cover it. I can also pay them off."

"Here's the deal. It's inevitable the press will find out. It'll look bad if they find out we tried to hide an investigation. So, I want it known clearly that you have influence over this."

"I have no problem with that."

"You're underestimating public opinion."

"You're underestimating _me_. I made Domino a world-renowned city, and my company practically runs it. The people need me more than I need them."

"Kaiba Corporations existed without you before with your wonderful step-father. I remember him. You are his spitting image and character, but just like him, you're replaceable."

Seto felt a cold shiver run down his spine, synapse to synapse. His hands slightly twitched against the arms of his seating. His mouth ran dry, as he was actually unsure of what to retort. Some cop had the nerve to strike an emotional chord in him. What, or who, he constantly buried a hundred meters under in his mental cemetery took an unwanted resurrection. While he wished to speak, his body wasn't abiding.

"But I guess that settles it," Watanabe quietly concluded. He patted the file and slid it back into his desk. He folds his hands together, observing the odd silence of his guest. "We can handle all the minor details with middlemen since you don't want to stay here too long. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Kaiba. My son will love his new duel disk."

"Of course," Seto briefly responded, but his unease wasn't laid to rest. He got up, but before he could leave, Watanabe provided the last words from their conference.

_"I wonder what she has that you want."_

* * *

"Both you and that Honda guy assumed I knew who Kisara was back in December. Why is that?" Seto queried Jonouchi after leaving the superintendent's office. He had noticed the man situated in an open-glass break room. Jonouchi hadn't noticed him and nearly spilled his cup of hot coffee recently made from the machine. He fumbled a bit with the cup before setting it on the countertop, evidently crossed by his unwelcome guest.

"What's it to you now?" Jonouchi shot back rather snappishly, but he held back from showing more evident displeasure. He brought his cup of coffee up for a small sip.

"Everything, actually."

"You wouldn't believe it anyway."

"You'd be surprised."

"I want something in return for answering."

Seto narrowed his eyes at the demand. He used the time it took him to fetch a styrofoam cup and fill up his own coffee to ponder over his priorities before regrettably agreeing. He settled, "Name it."

"She's never mentioned you, and everyone does at least once. So answer the question I had. Why are you involved with someone who's a stranger to you?"

Seto swished his nasty coffee for a couple seconds. He wasn't sure what kind of answer he should provide. In one way, he didn't want to divulge his ordeal with the Pharaoh, as that would inevitably cause more questions. He wasn't even sure where to start with that route. Jonouchi was also Yugi's alleged best friend, and Seto didn't want Yugi knowing where he had been in his disappearance. On the other hand, Jonouchi appeared to have some connection to Kisara, and he could possibly dismantle the mysteriousness of her character from Jonouchi.

Siding with the more risk-averse option, Seto stated, "One of her charges is for theft. One of the items she allegedly stole was a really expensive coat. It was mine, and they didn't believe her when she told the truth. Let's just say I feel like I have personal responsibility."

"Well that's the shittiest excuse I've heard from you. You could just say you like her, Kaiba."

"I don't-"

"Look, me and the gang went to Ancient Egypt sometime between freshman and sophomore year. We went back in time or something like that, to the pharaoh's timeline or some version of it. It's confusing."

Seto silently waited for more information, surprising Jonouchi, who had expected the normally egregious skeptic to at least release a small scoff.

"I guess you could say we saw her - Kisara, that is. We didn't know who she was, but someone who looked like you saved her."

"Why did he?"

"The villagers stoned her. We heard it was because she had a spirit or something that the villagers were afraid of. The Blue Eyes White Dragon. Heard she died for that guy too. Anyways, we thought you two were connected in some way when we first saw her as a new student. Man were we confused. Didn't know if we should've notified you or anything."

"Hm. Anything else?"

"Dunno. I guess you could say the past we travelled to wasn't historically accurate. It was based on the pharaoh's memories, if you get my drift. Damn. You're probably mad confused and gonna disregard anything I've said. Whatever. Take it at face value."

Seto continued to down his coffee as Jonouchi did as well. The two were at their most peaceful moment as Seto simmered over this new information, ignoring the other's nervous glances. Perhaps it was the heat of the coffee, but he felt his chest warm and strain, thinking - no, _feeling_ \- that he shouldn't have needed the words of a substandard duelist to unearth the miasma of his ancient identity.

"Do you think she's innocent?" Seto appeared to randomly ask as he crumpled his paper cup and chucked it into the trash.

Jonouchi simply shrugged, seeing as what Seto had asked was a loaded question. He instead changed subjects, "She's a nice girl. I don't blame ya for being interested. Plus you both have the whole past lives thing, I guess. That's a lot of effort you're putting in for one girl though. Then again, maybe it's not with your bank account."

"Are you sure _you're_ not the one with a stupid crush?"

"W-what?! No! I mean...she's cute, and she has this nice laugh, but - shut up, Kaiba. So what if I do? I like a lot of girls," Jonouchi started fumbling his words, so he took a couple breaths before continuing, "I was just joking about you liking her. You're probably getting something out of it. I don't know what it is, but it ain't good."

"Stick to fetching others' paperwork. You're not fit for the investigative aspect of the job."

"Shut up, Kaiba. You're always hurting someone else."

"Gladly."

* * *

Seto had managed to rearrange another meeting with Kisara. This time, however, their meeting conditions would be different. He had paid a heftier bribe for meeting her where they usually let the convicts roam for exercise, like cattle in a pen. Instead of a sweet little wooden fence, the barriers were of metal and several meters tall and rotting with cracks. The field wasn't spacious at all, barely the size of his living room. Nobody else had been let out according to his wishes.

He was waiting beside the only tree in the yard, one that was decaying despite summer pervading, playing around with a lighter in one of his hands. The gloom of the area rivaled office cubicles despite its openness toward the sky. He flicked the cap off and on, as if to count the seconds it took for personnel to deliver her. It took more bribery for him to carry such an item within prison grounds.

While Seto was here to personally tell the girl that her investigation had opened, he was also to test a theory of his own - to play with her. His gaze lifted toward the entrance. Kisara was accompanied by a guard, who was handling her roughly, dressed in the usual tan uniform. It seemed that Kisara noticed his appearance from the distance and paused momentarily. Doing so caused the guard to firmly shove her towards his direction each step of the way.

"Your time is limited," the guard said to Seto. With one final push against Kisara's back, the guard returned indoors.

Kisara nearly crashed into his chest, but she stopped herself shortly and instead threw her back against the tree. Her eyes were cast downward, and she had no wish to even ask him of his intentions.

"So it's true they like to abuse the worst of criminals," Seto remarked, his free hand pulling out a pack of generic cigarettes. His thumb opened the cartridge, and he lifted the box underneath her downcast face.

Kisara's head lifted a little. Her eyes shifted to his still with no trace of emotion.

"You smoke, right?" he asked.

Her mouth budged open a bit, but it looked like she was contemplating her answer. He knew immediately that his theory would be successful.

Kisara's fingers daintily pulled out one cigarette, which Seto promptly withdrew his own and returned the box to his pockets. He closed in on her and started the flame from the lighter and gestured toward her cigarette. She slowly slipped her cigarette into her mouth as her fingers trembled.

As he lifted the lighter toward her cigarette, her eyes stared up towards him, as if scrutinizing every aspect of his face. Seto didn't realize their height difference until now with the top of her head grazing the level of his chin. His arm paused.

"What's wrong?" he asked, a little perturbed by the intensity of her glare. Their first conversation didn't exactly have her engaging so directly.

"Your face is really attractive," she flatly said.

"...What?"

He wasn't foreign to compliments on his appearance. However, most of the time others usually overlooked his exterior because of his debatable personality.

"Is that offensive?" she breathed with the cigarette almost dangling out her mouth.

It wasn't the compliment but instead Kisara's sudden straightforwardness that threw him off. It sounded as objective and clinical as an observer could be and was nothing similar to the overt adoration of the occasional fangirl and tabloid. Her blank face didn't suggest anything strange.

"No, but," he failed to capture his uneasiness and settled, "Nevermind. Here."

He lit her cigarette, to which she immediately responded to by quickly removing the object and violently coughing. Her momentary rasps from desperately trying to inhale oxygen was a symphony for his ears.

"Hm. I'm supposed to believe you regularly smoke," he mockingly said.

"It's just been a while," she insisted as she tried once again to slip the cigarette into her mouth, but her nose automatically wrinkled from the atrocious tobacco scent. When she pulled out the cigarette to release smoke, her head dipped low as if she could successfully hide her disgusted face from his stern glare.

"They say the fire started from a cigarette. You're apparently the only person in the household who regularly smoked," he pointed out, only to be responded by her small suppressed coughs. Her body clearly wasn't accustomed to smoking, and he was genuinely elated by his discovery. He pushed on, "Yet here you are, cowering from one smoke."

He effortlessly lit his own cigarette, slipped it into his mouth, and exhaled the tobacco. All the while, he continued to observe her. Kisara had more nerve to statically shift her eyes in order to follow the streamline of his smoke. Her cigarette remained in between her index and middle finger, unwilling for a second round.

"I don't like people who don't respond. I don't have the patience."

He slipped his cigarette in his mouth again. With his free hands, one clasped around her hand that held her cigarette and brought it up towards himself. This earned him a surprised glance, to which he responded by stripping the cigarette from her grasp and languidly dropping it to their feet. He released her hand while simultaneously crushing the cigarette with the soles of his perfectly fine dress shoes.

He had caught her in a lie, but she quickly slunk down to her knees, her back scratching against the bark, placing her hands over her face and erasing the only trace of emotion.

The sound of her breaths became more audible and undulated in rhythm. She remained at his feet, truly and physically cowering before him. He couldn't see himself assuaging her emotional moment, so he slowly turned to fetch her supervisor. Before he could abandon her, he felt her tug the cuff of his pants.

He hadn't seen someone so pitiful until his eyes met her reddened, soaking ones as her head raised. Her mouth trembled in hesitation of her words, closing and opening with failure to communicate - like those fish in the artisan tanks of fancy restaurants. He probably would've celebrated in such miserable, pathetic behavior, but he could feel himself choking from her obvious despair, at a loss with what to do when he was normally so decisive.

Seto decided slowly sit down next to her and breathe out a couple puffs of smoke to the tune of her soft muffles.

"Stop," she managed to utter.

"The investigation is reopening whether you like it or not."

"W-why," she choked out, " _You…"_

"What about me?"

"You out of me...I mean…"

"Do you mean what do I get out of you?"

Her eyes shut with a slight nod.

"Do you know me?" he started.

She answered, "Seto Kaiba."

"That's all you can think of?"

Another silent nod.

If she knew nothing of their supposed past, then he had no idea how to properly answer her question without sounding even more insane.

"You…" he drifted a bit and stuck the cigarette back in his mouth to contemplate. There really wasn't an easy way to explain everything. He flatly said, "I owe you."

"Have we met before?" Kisara unsuredly peered. She corrected herself, "I mean, before-"

"I know what you mean," Seto interrupted, "You wouldn't remember."

She twiddled her fingers, being quiet again. This time he expected her to be quiet. What the hell was he supposed to say.

"You saved me in another life," he barely made out, but it earned him an actual glance from her. Before she could mistake him for a lunatic, he explained, "Let's just say I went on a spiritual journey recently. Rich people like doing that sort of thing when they have nothing left to do. I mean, I've done crazier things like build a space elevator if that indicates anything. I was told if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have been so successful in that life and this one. If I don't pay you back, all of that disappears."

Of all the insane words he had formulated into equally absurd sentences, this had to be the worst. Anyone who knew him on a surface level would have called him out by now. They knew he would sooner let Industrial Illusions uproot KaibaCorp again than to have himself attribute his accomplishments by other means than self-merit. However, he wasn't exactly lying. He did need her to achieve what he wanted most.

Her laugh was really soft, and it only lasted for a second or two. He didn't know what Jonouchi was referring to when he talked about her laugh. It irked him, but he would've laughed at anyone else spouting what he had.

"Who told you this?"

Kisara's questions were really simple, and those were the worst types of questions.

"Someone I trust," he hesitantly said. In his head, he imagined Atem even though it was Jonouchi who had explicitly explained things.

"You must love that person," she mentioned with the most absentminded expression. She tucked her legs under her arms and bent forward to pick at the grass. Seto watched her meaningless motions, perturbed by her strange remark. He didn't have to question her as she continued herself, "I, um...I heard that you only trust your little brother. You don't seem to have trust in many people, so it must belong to people you love."

How weird it was that the most she had to say to him was irrelevant to his interests in her. She was veering away from the intended course of the conversation, and she wasn't clever enough to fool him. Her little analysis of him wasn't really exceptional. Most people already knew he held Mokuba in high regard. She was just glaringly wrong about extending trust with love.

"The investigation is happening whether you like it or not. It would be best for both of us if you act nice with authorities," he attempted to redirect the subject.

"Reincarnation sounds exhausting," she muttered, "and pointless."

He wondered why he had so much patience.

"But if it's real...then am I damned to live a certain way?" she questioned as she picked a clump of grass and started tossing it a couple feet forward.

"I'm your ticket for change. No strings attached."

"That's not true by your own words."

"What do you mean?"

"If you help me, you're really helping yourself."

"I already offered to make your life as comfortable as you want."

"But I'd have to give up something to help you. Again. Right? If past lives are true, and we're circling around."

"That's a hypothetical."

"So is the concept of past lives."

Seto crushed his cigarette into the ground, tapping and twisting multiple times as if to stave away his temper.

"I owe you, Kisara. Nothing bad will happen. It's true I'm doing all this for myself, but helping me won't require you to sacrifice anything."

"Yes, it does."

Her eyes met his directly, and she started to scan his face like previously. Kisara stopped plucking the grass and rolled her head back to rest against the tree. From what he knew of her so far, she had nothing to sacrifice aside from perhaps her own life. He gathered that her life on the outside was unbelievably dry. A part of him envied her for that.

"Tell me what you can't to the world," he said, "I can find some way to win your case without the whole truth."

"I don't trust you…"

"If you want to be free-"

"I don't want to be free," she cut him off.

He looked at the symbols on his hands, and he knew their conversation would just circle again. Seto released his cigarette, letting the waste to be absorbed by the earth in the next decade or so. He couldn't recall the last time he had been out for so long in the silence of the natural world - as natural that it could get within the confines of prison gates. His eyes peeked at the top edge of the fence, and he was barely able to discern the setting sun. Shades of magenta and gold smeared the sky, an otherwise beautiful watercolor painting if not for his headache. It was eerily peaceful, but stillness disturbed him, debilitated him even, and next to her, next to one of Domino's most condemned criminals, he couldn't do anything about it. Leaving now would be admitting that he had given up, but he dreaded waiting out until he saw the same guard walk through that entrance to retrieve her.

He heard the grass rustle. Kisara had fallen over to her side, opposite of his, eyes shut as if to throw herself into a slumber. Her head hit the grass with an evident thud, of which caused her eyes to fly open from surprise. A soft grunt lapsed from her as one hand started rubbing her head and the other trying to prop herself up. Seto grabbed her elbow and pulled, trying to aid her in sitting back up. She appeared disoriented as she started scanning his profile like he had just appeared from thin air a second ago. Her eyes looked down at his hand wrapped around her arm and momentarily stared at it.

It took too long for Seto to finally release his hold on her after realizing she was sober enough. He was too furious with her to bother asking if she was alright or whatever caused her odd episode. Before he could stand up and leave her, he noticed her eyes kept landing at his hands - the symbols.

"You can see these?" he asked as he waved one hand in front of her face.

"I've never seen someone have tattoos like those...not that I've been around much," she mentioned. Kisara seemed more curious, but as usual, she kept her sentiments short.

"Can you read them?"

"Not really."

Seto didn't expect that she would find the inscriptions legible, but he was foolishly hoping that by some divine trick that she could and that would somehow incite some rationale into her. Maybe it would save him immense effort in trying to explain everything.

"It's a contract," he said, "The one about appeasing you. These markings will disappear once I do, therefore these still existing on my hands means that I haven't done so. I left you alone for a couple of weeks to sort out your case, so I know for sure you don't really want to stay here."

Gibberish. Kisara was taking in even more incomprehensible information. Still, a part of him believed that she didn't completely distrust him, maybe because she wasn't explicitly calling him out like he would to himself.

"Others can't see them?" she eventually questioned.

"No, they can't. Only you and I, apparently. I'll prove it right now."

Seto noticed the guard come sauntering over, and once she was about a foot near, he stood up and showed off one hand. The guard ignored him as she instructed Kisara, "Get up."

"Do you see my hand?" Seto insisted to the guard, who simply looked peeved by him.

"I have to take her back, Mr. Kaiba."

"You don't see anything off about them?"

"No."

He looked over to Kisara, who looked at least a little bit surprised. Before she could utter anything, the guard had a strong grip around her arm. She winced.

"What's your name?" Seto asked the guard.

"Nakamura."

With one last nod to the criminal and the guard, Seto bid his thanks and left the iron wasteland.

* * *

She always had a poor sense of time. Whether it was the school assignments that she had never managed to complete, or her inconsistent circadian rhythm, Kisara drifted in a timeless void. The heat of her cell increased, and she felt her skin start to burn, heard the crisp crackling of flame and wood. Her body was stiffly laid out on her bed, with only her face making minor movements, eyes shut but the eyes themselves shifting rapidly underneath the thin skin of her closed eyes.

Fire pursued her since as far as she could remember, magically omnipresent.

Perhaps she was still dreaming because she couldn't recognize her guard anymore, the one who constantly reminded her of her grave crime by the tug of her hair or the belligerent shoving or the suffocatingly tight squeezes on her arms. Kisara blankly stared at the stranger waiting outside the cell, thinking it odd that she hadn't barged in and used some forceful tactic to wake her up at the required time. It was a dream, so she buried her head deeper into her pillow.

"48299. Please wake up. I will be your new oversight and will not engage in the unnecessarily violent tactics of my predecessor, but I will have to resort to brute force if you fail to get up soon."

Nakamura despised her, as did the other personnel, but Nakamura especially. Despite the moments of abuse rendered onto her, a pit in the back of Kisara's mind believed that she had incurred the treatment. She didn't blame them for their actions because her crime would make anyone else find her intolerable by first encounter - that is, anyone aside from the esteemed Seto Kaiba.

Kisara rose to try and recognize the new guard with several questions boiling inside her, but she had no voice in this place, no hope to have easy answers. As the rigidly scheduled day of prison aged, she found that her new guard, Tsukishima, barely laid a finger on her and the faintest of hesitance each time she had to near Kisara. Kisara also found that she could eat her meals in peace without shifting eyes towards her, and when she used to stare back at Nakamura, it would earn her a derogatory response or two. It seemed like the other guards unexpectedly ceased their talks about her, the ones usually having to do with her deserving of a death sentence instead of wasting capital resources.

As days passed, she managed to grasp the reason behind the paradigm shift of the prison environment. In muddled whispers from the gossiping guards, she heard something about _obeying the infantile wishes of the pretentious businessman_ _if they wanted to keep their jobs_. It was enough for her to identify who they were speaking of.

"He asked for her name…" she mumbled in the middle of the night, tracing against the wall, transcribing in invisible ink what she could so clearly remember from the flawless skin of his beautiful bony hands.


End file.
